Milton Esterow, a newsman til the end

Legends of their time: Robin with Milton Esterow (left) and Tony Bennett

RIP to Milton Esterow, a legend and a mensch.

Longtime editor and publisher of ARTnews, where I worked for him for 22 years, Milton trained generations of editors and writers, published scoop after scoop that won prize after prize, and was justly proud of the impact of the magazine’s relentless investigative journalism—particularly when it came to the restitution of Holocaust war loot.

He treated art writing with the same standards he brought from the New York Times, where he had risen from copy boy, as he recounted in the disarming anecdotes he shared with all manner of characters he cultivated in the art world and beyond, wining and dining them all over lunch at Keens as he teased out leads he fed to his crew of reporters and editors.

Milton was allergic to posers, theory, art speak, and the words metaphor and eponymous. He loved a punchy lede, a punny headline, a catchy quote, and above all a great yarn about a “heavy hitter.”

After he sold ARTnews in 2014, Milton kept writing, still banging out the copy on his beloved manual typewriter, a newsman to the end. There will be many more stories and tributes—and, of course, anecdotes—to come on how Milton changed art journalism, built careers, and made a difference. And how his passing marks the end of an era, for art magazines and for art journalism.